On Saturday, October 22, Marc Castelli’s annual Downrigging Exhibition opens at MASSONIART with an Open House from 10-4 pm. Marc Castelli will be in the Gallery for an Artist Talk at 12 Noon. This event is just the kick-off for a series of receptions planned during the two-week exhibition. Fireworks & Oysters is the annual gallery celebration scheduled for Downrigging Weekend on Friday evening from 5-7:30 pm. Local oystermen, often the subjects of Castelli’s watercolor paintings, will be back this year out on the sidewalk shucking oysters and refreshments will be served in the Gallery. The two-week exhibition will end with the November First Friday town wide arts crawl, November 4, from 5-8 pm.

Castelli has been painting the watermen for over twenty years. He is known for his intimate perspective of their lives, a perspective gained by his active involvement on their workboats. The Downrigging Exhibition will feature 25 new watercolor paintings and gives Castelli an opportunity to explore the unusual aspects of his subject - from stacks of plastic bins perched on the docks to a startling portrait of a blue crab.

“No artist on the Chesapeake scene covers the waterfront better than Marc Castelli,” author Tom Horton wrote in recent article, Truth in Painting. “I want to paint the truth of their lives. I see them as the last of the free ranging cowboys. I don’t romanticize them or pretty them up,” explains Castelli. Indeed, it’s the finely rendered detail that sets Castelli apart “from the rust and grime on the workboats, to the concentration on a deckhand’s face as he untangles a rockfish from a gill net. In those minutiae he captures the essence of being a waterman.”

Each year during Downrigging Weekend, the latest in Castelli’s series of Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe Prints is premiered. “Latest Model/Spirit of Wye Town” is the tenth in the series and is exclusively available at The Finishing Touch. To see the entire series visit: www.finishingtouchshop.com

In the last two year period, Castelli has been honored with major exhibitions at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum; the premier of the Simison Collection of his paintings at the Kohl Gallery at Washington College through the auspices of the Center for Environment and Society; the selection of his watercolors for the 2010 and 2011 Maryland Public Television’s Chesapeake Bay Week Poster; and with numerous articles in regional and national print media. He has also participated in exhibitions at the National Maritime Historical Society’s annual meetings in Washington, DC and at the Annapolis Maritime Museum’s fundraising event. For those following the artistic career of yet another Castelli, Marc’s son Ken Castelli will be exhibiting new work during this exhibition as well.